{"id":2716,"date":"2012-05-20T16:48:30","date_gmt":"2012-05-20T20:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=2716"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:14:40","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:14:40","slug":"news-on-hiv-and-hcv-testing-and-in-praise-of-accurate-screening-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/news-on-hiv-and-hcv-testing-and-in-praise-of-accurate-screening-tests\/2012\/05\/20\/","title":{"rendered":"News on HIV and HCV Testing, and in Praise of Accurate Screening Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Two recent news items reminded me how lucky we are to have some very<\/em> accurate screening tests for certain infectious diseases.<\/p>\n

The news:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An expert FDA panel backed approval of the first true home test for HIV<\/a>, the OraQuick mouth swab test. Approval of OraQuick for home use may occur later this year. While home testing for HIV exists already —\u00a0HomeAccess<\/a> — the OraQuick test will be the first that does not require submitting the specimen to a central laboratory; the user wil be able to get the result at home, much like a pregnancy test.<\/li>\n
  2. The CDC is recommending that all Americans born between 1945 and 1965 be tested for hepatitis C.<\/a> With 1 in 30 from this age group infected, and increasingly effective therapies available now and the near future, this testing strategy (which involves a simple blood test done by a clinician) could dramatically reduce liver-related deaths. (Note that I can’t find this recommendation on the actual CDC site — I know it’s somewhere, but not\u00a0here<\/a> or\u00a0here<\/a> or\u00a0here<\/a>. Oh well.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Neither one of these tests is perfect, but they’re definitely good enough to be used broadly, with reactive results triggering further testing to confirm or rule out infection. Furthermore, confirmatory tests for HIV and HCV are extremely<\/em> accurate. In other words, sorting out real HIV or HCV infection from a false-positive screening test is generally quite straightforward.<\/p>\n

    Now compare and contrast with the disease mentioned in this email query from a primary care provider:<\/p>\n

    Hi Paul, quick question. 49 year old healthy guy, fatigue and palpitations on and off the past year; normal exam and ECG. Says other people in his neighborhood have Lyme, so I sent the test.\u00a0ELISA is positive, immunoblot has one IgM band, all IgG bands negative. Could this be Lyme? Should I just give him doxy? For how long?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    What did Charlie Brown say when Lucy pulled away the football?<\/p>\n

    Oh yeah.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Two recent news items reminded me how lucky we are to have some very accurate screening tests for certain infectious diseases. The news: An expert FDA panel backed approval of the first true home test for HIV, the OraQuick mouth swab test. Approval of OraQuick for home use may occur later this year. While home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,5,8,9],"tags":[408,423,447,577],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care","category-hiv","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","category-policy","tag-hcv","tag-hiv","tag-hiv-testing","tag-lyme-disease"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}